A Scoping Review on Resources, Tools, and Programs to Support Women’s Leadership in Global Health: What Is Available, What Works, and How Do We Know?

Background: The unequal representation of women in global health leadership is a prevalent issue laterally across global health fields and vertically down experience levels. Although women compose much of the workforce, gender-based barriers prevent female talent from filling their appropriate leadership roles, which funnels unique expertise and problem-solving skills on a diversity of health topics out of positions of leadership. Currently, many calls to action have been proposed to raise awareness of the lack of women’s global health leadership, with Women in Global Health as one of the more prominent movements. This paper evaluates how the priorities and strategies for leadership training and development set forth by such movements have changed the landscape of available programs and resources for women in global health, based on availability, success, and evaluation. Objectives: This manuscript maps existing programs and resources that support women’s leadership in global health and describes available evaluations and documented outcomes. Methods: We used a dual approach of a peer-reviewed and gray literature search to build a comprehensive list of existing programs and resources designed to support women’s leadership in global health. Out of 54 items included for full-text review and 22 gray literature items screened for inclusion, a total of 31 resources were processed in the final extraction. We used descriptive quantitative analysis for categorical and binary variables, while qualitative data from evaluations were analyzed for outcomes. Findings: Resources were in the form of conferences, supplemental resources to conferences, certificate programs, coursework, stand-alone documents, single-focus programs, and mostly multicomponent programs. Most resources did not have a global health focus area, and a third of the total resources identified women first authors from predominantly high-income countries. About half of the resources mention mentorship and networking as activities incorporated as part of the resource. Over half of the resources did not have a target audience, and most resources were free to users. While there is a lack of consistent and meaningful evaluation of the resources, the available captured metrics of success were described as the number of career-advancing opportunities after using the resources. Examples of opportunities include enrollment in graduate school, receiving academic promotions, participating in internships, presenting at conferences, and publications. Conclusion: While the supply of existing programming and resources to advance women’s leadership in the global health field is limited in terms of quantity, it is rich in diverse formats, content, and implementation. This scoping review supports the notion that empowered female leadership in global health requires a complementary support system that encourages the unique needs and talents of female leaders. Such a support system needs inclusive targeting regardless of experience level, academic degree, or location. Furthermore, evaluations of resources will be critical in maintaining meaningful interventions that effectively dismantle the infrastructures that continue to limit the success of women leaders in global health.


Johns Hopkins University
Center for Global Health, n.d.

Emerging Women Leaders in Global Health
Emerging Women Leaders in Global Health (EDGE) is an multicomponent resource that supplies women with access to resources, tools, and skills. The initiative includes a monthly seminar series, a Slack network, and a 3-credit JHSPH summer institute course.

Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health
This resource had no target audience, had a target gender of women, nonbinary individuals, and men, and for women leaders in training and/or in their mid stages of career.
Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Disease, 2022 TDR: Women in Science TDR: Women in Science is a multicomponent resource designed to improve the careers of women scientists in academic and research institutions in 9 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, and Uganda This resource is a document that provides a gender and equity analysis of the global health and social workforce. This report summarizes over 170 gender and equity studies in global health and argues that the loss of female talent impacts global health. Therefore, more representation of women in leadership positions could resolve more health challenges.

World Health Organization
This resource has no target location, targeted for women, with no target degree level or years of experience.

Liu et al., 2019 Women's global health leadership in LMICs Comment -The Lancet
This resource is a document that highlights the lack of lowand middle-income voices in women's leadership in global health. This document highlights the unequal progress towards gender equality in global health institutions in high income countries compared to LMICs.
The Lancet This resource is for LMIC's, for females, and with no target degree level or years of experience.

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, 2022
Global Women's Leadership Project The Global Women's Leadership Project is a multicomponent resource that provides research for UNESCO and UN Women to support work on women, peace, justice, and women's human rights.

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
This resource has no target location, for women, for graduate students, and with no target years of experience.
Women Deliver, 2021 Women Deliver: Conference The Women Deliver: Conference connects advocates and decision makers from a variety of fields and serves as a policy moment and accountability check for the commitments made for gender equality internationally.
Women Deliver This resource has no target location, no target gender, no target degree level, and no target years of experience.
Women Deliver, 2018 Women Deliver: Strengthening Skills The Women Deliver's Digital University has online coursework for every Women Deliver leader. The learning experience includes peer-to-peer learning, networking with subject matter experts, advocacy, and project management. Furthermore, there are courses that apply gender lens to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and invests in women leaders and advocates. This document resource describes the Women in Global Health-Germany network as an exceptional example of the broader multicomponent resource, Women in Global Health. The Germany chapter serves as a great example of increasing the number of women leadership positions within global health and highlights their accomplishments. The Germany chapter meets regularly to maintain a flexible and engaged network and hold events such as conferences.

Women in Global Health
This resource is targeted towards women in Germany and high income countries in general, with no targeted degree levels, and is for women in their late careers in global health.

KwediNolna, 2017
Mentoring for early-career women in health research: The HIGHER Women Consortium approach The HIGHER Women consortium has a multicomponent resource known as the Mentor-Protege Program to support mentee's growth and success in health research. The program includes workshops focused on proposal writing for projects, and they have opportunities to present at international conferences.

HIGHER Women consortium
This resource is targeted towards women research scientists in Cameroon in their early careers, with no target degree level.
Javadi, 2020 Enhancing diversity in public health scholarship: the role of publication mentorship This resource is a six-month publication mentorship structured program supporting early-career women in the field of Health Policy and Systems Research in low-and middleincome countries.

collaboration between Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research and Health Systems Global
This resource is for women in LMICs, with no target degree level and in their early-careers.

Dhatt, 2017
The time is now -a call to action for gender equality in global health leadership This is a document, or a call to action paper, to prioritize gender equality in global health's leadership. The goal is to reach a minimum 50-50 representation in women's leadership in global health across all key stakeholders by 2030, by ensuring each global health leader has public commitments and a plan to achieve their gender equality goals. This document has a comprehensive list of the commitments made by the global health community.

Women in Global Health
This resource has no target location, no target gender, and no target degree level or years of experience. Quantitative success of the program is measured by the number of promotions, conference presentations, and abstract/manuscript submissions. Metrics measured at the end of year 1 include 6 participants receiving academic promotions and 10 inaugural scholars collectively presented at 11 international conferences and submitting 22 abstracts and 19 manuscripts.
Authors stated that they will conduct an in-depth evaluation and explore the program's shortterm and intermediate outcomes. The survey has been redesigned to allow for pre and post-test data collection from participants and leadership Academy for the Future of Women (increased from 1 to 9 in two years). In addition, 90% of participants state that the program enabled them to follow their passion.
facilitators. Authors recommend matching the facilitators with the participants each year to get indepth qualitative data overtime. (Kwedi Nolna et al. 2017) Mentoring for early-career women in health research Qualitative evaluation of workshops and general feedback from program participants Four outcomes of value were reported: applying to a PhD program, acceptance into a fellowship, and presenting or participating in international conferences.
The authors recommend motivating mentors with resources for network socials and small group workshops. In addition, the authors advise working with universities and research institutions to improve recruitment and retention of participants. Lastly, a central African forum to include networks in Gabon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, and Central African Republic is recommended for extended networking and collaborative opportunities.